


domesticity and other cults

by lagaudiere



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 08:29:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5659582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lagaudiere/pseuds/lagaudiere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, Mac and Dennis move to the suburbs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	domesticity and other cults

**Author's Note:**

> Very minimal research in crust punk was involved here. 
> 
> Rated M for language and depictions of unhealthy relationships involving people not self-aware enough to know that, although honestly the tone of this is probably too light for the source material.

“Dee,” Dennis says on a Wednesday afternoon, throwing the door of her apartment open in irritation, “there are a bunch of dirty homeless people in your hallway again.” 

“Oh, no, don't worry about that,” Dee says breezily. She's looking over Mac’s shoulder, watching him play some video game. “Those are just the crust punks. Hey, can you actually sleep with all these prostitute characters?” 

“Uh, yeah, Dee, but my character would never do that,” Mac explains, staring intently at the screen. “He's a priest seeking justice for the people who murdered this orphan he was taking care of. I have like, a whole backstory.” 

“Wait, wait.” Dennis steps between them and the TV screen until Mac sighs and presses pause. “What exactly are crust punks?” 

He almost regrets asking when he sees the gleam in Dee’s eyes that appears whenever she gets to explain something to him. 

“Well, you see, crust punk is primarily a genre of music. However, it's known for having a ‘dirty’ sound, its followers often wear clothing that’s torn or associated with lower class people, and don't wash their hair. One of the big local crust punk musicians lives in my building, so they congregate here. But they're really just harmless rich white people,” Dee finishes flippantly. “Can we put the game back on?” 

Dennis stares at her in horror. “You're telling me that these are wealthy people who are intentionally presenting themselves as dirty and poor because of some music thing?” 

“Uh… yeah.” 

“This is pretty messed up,” Mac says, furrowing his brow. “If rich people are going to do the stuff poor people do, we should start doing their stuff too. We should do stuff like get nice clothes and eat kale and move to the suburbs.” 

Dennis and Dee, of course, are not part of the lower class culture which the crust punks in the hallway are emulating, and Dennis is momentarily annoyed by these aspersions on their class status, but he moves past it in favor of what seems of a good idea. 

“I think the point Mac is trying to make is that Philadelphia is clearly going downhill. Before we know it this city is going to be overflowing with people who don't have any class, any taste, any standards. It'll just be trash and people playing music on sidewalks! We have to get out now before it gets any worse.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “We should move to the suburbs.” 

Dee snorts derisively. “Yeah, sure. I am not moving.” 

Mac and Dennis stare at her in shared distaste. “Um, Dee, no one invited you,” Mac says slowly. He laughs and shakes his head. “Let's do it. Let's get the hell out of this city!” 

*** 

Dennis actually has a decent amount of money--most of it embezzled from Frank throughout the years, which is a solid financial foundation. Buying a house isn't financially unreasonable. It's a good investment, really. 

Mac has essentially no money, but the initial idea was his, and according to the arbitration process, that would equal co-ownership. 

"You don't think buying a house together is a little weird?" Dee asks. 

"No, Dee, I do not think it is weird," Dennis says impatiently. "We're getting out of the city before it becomes total garbage. Also, we're working on a new angle with women... Well, I am." 

"Oh, really?" 

Dennis politely ignores her derisive tone of voice. "I'm doing the divorced dad thing. Works better with a nice house. Girls love it." 

"Alright, whatever," Dee says. "You and Mac can go do your gay little white picket fence thing. Charlie, Frank and I are jumping on this crust punk trend." 

Dennis notices for the first time what she's wearing--a backwards baseball cap and a hideously torn and stained flannel shirt. There's a button on it that says "fuck the establishment". He decides immediately that engaging with this is going to be a waste of time. 

"Have fun assimilating to the bourgeoisie!" Dee yells after him on his way out of the bar. 

***   
Mac insists on doing the Honey and Vinegar thing when they look at houses. He says the realtors will be more generous with fellow members of the profession, and they'll definitely give them a better deal if they seem gay, because of the liberal media. Dennis can't disagree with that. Of course, they'll be signing documents, so they do have to use their real names. Mac introducing them as Ron and Dennis Reynolds, married couple, is admittedly a little weird, but Dennis made him promise not to use any variant of the word "twink". 

Their realtor is super old, and probably married, so it turns out okay. She is indeed especially nice to them, showing them houses with breakfast nooks and backyard swimming pools and always pointing out extra bedrooms that could be, with a significant glance over her shoulder, "maybe a nursery?" 

"We're looking for something really family-friendly," Mac says in the third house, casually draping an arm around Dennis' shoulders. "You know, really good schools. Secular public schools where they're cool with test tube babies." 

"Well, this should be perfect!" the agent enthuses. "Why don't I leave you two alone for a few minutes and you can think it over?" 

Mac doesn't remove his arm when she leaves. "Well, you heard her, it's perfect," he says, raising his eyebrows expectantly. 

"Mac, we do not need good public schools, why would you tell her that?" Dennis hisses. "And can you stop touching me?" 

"Well, I didn't think we would raise the kids Catholic!" He withdraws his arm sheepishly. "Come on, it really is perfect though. Don't you love this house?" 

"It's a good house," Dennis admits. 

"This would be like, the nicest place I've ever lived," Mac says, a distant look in his eye. 

Ron and Dennis Reynolds sign the deed. 

*** 

The bar is pretty crowded when they get back, mostly with people wearing essentially the same crust punk uniform that Dee, Charlie, and Frank have adopted. Charlie's standing at the bar serving drinks to a bunch of filthy people who are apparently talking about the evils of daily showering. 

"God damn it!" Dennis yells across the room. "This is exactly the kind of people we were trying to avoid. Charlie, I want these people out of here!" 

"No can do, Dennis," Charlie says breezily. "This is our clientele now. I've finally found my people." 

"These people, as you so snobbishly refer to them, understand us," Dee says. Her hair is braided into something that is probably supposed to resemble dreadlocks. "And they're part of a counterculture. They're not people that would move to the suburbs to avoid gentrification." 

"That's not what gentrification means," Dennis says impatiently. Across the room, Frank is egging on a group of people who appear to be doing shots out of rusted tin cans. 

"Come on, dude," Mac says. "We don't need this. Let's go buy curtains and kitchen stuff." 

This suddenly seems like a very appealing prospect. "Yeah, we will go get curtains and kitchen stuff," Dennis declares. "Because we're responsible, home-owning adults!" 

The crust punks do not respond. 

***   
Mac is very enthusiastic about the kitchen implements. He's enthusiastic about almost everything they buy for the house, actually. 

"Hey Dennis, do you think we need two whisks?" he says, rummaging through a cart full of things Dennis doesn't recognize as food-related at all. "Like, would you whisk something with two hands?" 

"I would assume that we're never going to make anything that requires whisking, since neither of us can cook." 

"Well, I was thinking I might learn, man." Mac throws three whisks into the cart. "We should get some hand towels too."

Dennis trails reluctantly after Mac through the whole store as he pours hundreds of dollars worth of ridiculous home goods into their cart. At the register he holds out a hand for Dennis' credit card and he bitterly hands it over. 

"We're buying our first house," Mac tells the cashier pleasantly. She smiles and nods and Dennis rolls his eyes and doesn't bother to say anything.

 

***  
“Hey,” Mac says as they pull into the new neighborhood, “um, we’re not going to actually socialize with these people, are we?” 

“Hmm?” Dennis is searching for the streets named after flowers that his GPS is telling him they're supposed to be passing. “Who?” 

Mac bites nervously at the straw from his Big Gulp, which Dennis had had to remind him not to throw out of a window onto someone's lawn. “The suburban rich family lawn-mowing people.” 

“Oh, God no. We won't be going to any barbecues or PTA meetings.” Well, Mac won't. He wouldn't know how to act around those people. Dennis might drop in on a few, to see what caliber of bored, lonely housewives are available. 

“The point of the suburbs is social isolation,” he explains. “No one's going to ask any questions or try to get to know us. People don't want that from each other anymore.” 

“I was thinking neighborhood watch might be kind of cool,” Mac says as they pull into the driveway. 

“Absolutely not.” 

It doesn't take long to unload what they brought with them--particularly Mac’s possessions, which fit into one suitcase (and, Dennis noticed when they packed, worryingly include an antique wedding dress). 

Dennis surveys the street from the lawn. “Nice place,” Mac says. “We could get a lot of skeletons on this lawn for Halloween. Really gross ones.” 

“Hey, you must be the new neighbors,” a voice interrupts. 

Very disappointingly, some white-haired old man is standing on their lawn, grinning. 

In silent commitment to suburban isolation, Mac and Dennis do not respond. 

***

Mac follows through on the plan to learn to cook. 

He piles up a stack of Martha Stewart cookbooks in the kitchen, insists that it isn't girly because she was in jail for a while and has probably stabbed someone, and embarks on an enthusiastic attempt to learn how to make something without starting any fires. 

The second worst thing about this is that he quickly gets pretty good at it. The absolute worst thing is that he starts trying to make Dennis eat breakfast. 

“You should eat something,” Mac says, cajoling. “I made French toast. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, you know.” 

Dennis sighs and lights a cigarette. “You know I don't eat breakfast. I barely even have an appetite before five anymore.” 

Mac eats his own French toast with forced enthusiasm, extolling the virtues of carboloading. 

“What exactly are you trying to accomplish, here?” Dennis says, eyeing the many shattered eggshells on the counter with suspicion. 

“I'm learning a skill! A trade! Maybe we could start serving food at Paddy’s.” 

“We're going to serve French toast at a bar?” 

Mac just groans. 

"You're gonna get cancer someday," he says disapprovingly when Dennis stubs out his cigarette on a half-eaten slice of toast, and Dennis thinks with some satisfaction that Mac has been breathing in his secondhand smoke for twenty years, and they'll probably both get cancer together. That would be an adventure. 

***  
The dog turns up on the doorstep after two weeks of living at the new house. 

 

Dennis almost trips over it on his way out the door for their daily commute to the bar. It immediately wakes up from a deep sleep and, instead of barking, stares at him with alarming, beady eyes. 

Dennis isn't necessarily opposed to stray dogs, but this one is both small, white, and fluffy, and totally covered in mud. It has no social value. 

One step behind him, Mac gasps dramatically. “Oh my God… Pippin?” 

“That cannot be your disgusting dog,” Dennis says. “It has two eyes.” 

“No, but it looks just like him!” Mac steps right past him and scoops up the dog, which not only makes no effort to resist but immediately starts licking his hand. “You know what? I bet this is Pippin’s son.” 

“What? Why would it be--” 

“He always comes back, dude!” Mac cradles the dog like it’s a baby; it states at Dennis unblinkingly. “Obviously he finally died a dignified death of old age, surrounded by his family, and he sent his son here so I could take care of him.” 

“That is not how dogs work!” 

Mac holds the dog up and gazes directly into its eyes. Clumps of dirt and dog hair scatter onto the floor. “This dog was sent to me. It's in his genes. We have to keep him.” The dog actually starts wagging its tail at that. “I'm naming him Chase.” 

“Oh, don't name it Chase.” Dennis nervously glances at the door. He has to come up with an exit strategy before Mac wants to give the dog a bath or a sweater or something. 

“I think Chase McReynolds is a good name.” Mac wedges the dog under one arm and abruptly starts walking away. “I'm gonna get him some food from the kitchen.” 

“Do not call it Chase McReynolds!” Dennis yells after him. “Do not keep the dog!” 

They keep the dog. 

***

Mac makes pasta for their first monthly dinner in the suburbs, insisting he’d rather do that than go out now that he has the skills to allow them to fend for themselves, in the Italian food department. They drink merlot out of plastic cups, and the food isn't exactly Guigino’s, but Dennis has to admit he’s impressed. Internally, of course. 

Afterwards, Dennis scrolls through the adult section of pay-per-view, because it's a special occasion and they should spend a little money, looking for the all-important balance of something they can both enjoy without it being weird. 

Mac cringes. “Do we have to watch this?” 

“Well, yes, I mean, I haven't had time to build my sex tape collection back up yet.” He glances suspiciously at Mac, who's visibly uncomfortable. “Do you not want to… this is our tradition.” 

“I know, I just, we’re not going to want to watch the same things, and…” Mac sighs heavily. “Could we just watch something we know we’re both going to enjoy? We could do Fight Club.” 

Fight Club is one of Mac’s favorites, although Dennis doesn't really understand the appeal, beyond the homoeroticism and violence. He thinks Mac might be missing the point a little. 

It's not worth arguing about, though. It would be weird, to insist on the porn. Dennis knows it would be weird. 

They watch the movie, with the dog between them making gross sniffling sounds the entire time. He notices Mac bite his lip and shift awkwardly when Brad Pitt is shirtless and streaked in blood, but that's hardly anything new. 

It's comfortable, monthly dinner and movie night. It's not weird. 

“I’d give you five stars,” Mac says quietly during the end credits. “You know, as a person.” 

He must still be thinking about the old box of sex tapes. Understandable; they were a irreplaceable loss. “I'm a five-star man,” Dennis says instinctively. 

“None of those girls really knew you like I do.” Mac smiles at him; he looks younger, softer in this light. He has nice lips, Dennis thinks; he’s had that thought before, and pushed it aside. That's the way things work best. 

“They didn't deserve me,” Dennis says, and doesn't think about the implications. 

***  
The "sleeping with women" part of the suburban house plan doesn't work so well. 

 

Dennis planned it meticulously: the household decorations intended to imply the presence of a just-fractured nuclear family, the framed photographs of “the twins” (himself and Dee as children), even the drawings pinned to the fridge (actually Charlie’s). 

The woman (Megan, leggy blonde, C-cups, mid-twenties) was a real catch from one of the nicer bars in South Philly; Dennis knew that it was sexist and gauche to assign numerical values to women, but if he were going to, she was a solid nine out of ten. The Demonstrate Value phase had gone exceptionally well and he was ready to move smoothly into Engage Physically. 

“It's been really tough living here without the kids,” Dennis explains sadly as he opens the front door. “You know, I just look around every day and wonder how she could take them from me. I can't even go into their rooms.” 

Megan coos sympathetically. “Oh… I wish there was something I could do to help.” 

Dennis smiles slightly to himself and flicks on the light. 

“Hey,” Mac’s voice says blearily from the living room, “you're home. I texted you a bunch of times. I was starting to get worried.” 

He's sprawled on the living room couch surrounded by bottles of girly fruit-flavored vodka. Dennis was expecting to be able to quickly shoo him out of the way; this is an unforeseen complication. Mac doesn't usually drink hard liquor alone. 

“Who's your friend?” Mac says. He attempts a half-hearted leer, but Dennis hears the note of bitterness. 

“Could you give us a moment alone, please?” he says pointedly. “Just--go upstairs.” 

Megan, standing behind him, still has her hand on the door knob. 

“I was waiting for you,” Mac says plaintively. 

Megan taps him nervously on the shoulder. “Um, Dennis, who is this?” 

He can salvage this. He can. “Just my unemployed friend,” he says smoothly. “He's staying here for a while so he can get back on his feet. Would you like to see some pictures of my children?” 

Mac frowns in confusion. “Dude, you have to stop telling people that. We’ve lived together for years.” He waves a shaky hand at Megan. “He's not divorced. I mean, he is, but he was married to Maureen for like a day, and then I came over and she was like, take your boy toy and leave, it was--” 

“Mac!” Dennis snaps, but it's too late. 

Megan is staring at him with her mouth open. “I should--probably go,” she says. 

“Wait,” Dennis says, throwing a hand out to block the door, “this isn’t--it’s not what it looks like, I mean, obviously--” 

“You two obviously have a lot to talk about,” she snaps, and shoves past him. 

“You’ll regret this!” Dennis calls after her, but he can’t muster much conviction. 

Mac laughs, softly and infuriatingly. Dennis strides over to him, kicking bottles out of the way. “What the hell is wrong with you? Do you even realize what you sound like? Do you listen to yourself?” 

“I still have some of this,” Mac mutters obliviously, groping for one of the bottles. “Do you want some? It's vanilla.” 

“You ruined my shot with that girl,” Dennis hisses. “You embarrassed me. Why are you drinking so much, anyway?” 

Mac sits up halfway and downs the rest of the bottle of vanilla vodka. “I was just--thinking.” 

There’s something in his eyes that makes Dennis deeply uncomfortable, an emotion that’s too familiar but that he only half understands. It’s a little too hard to watch, like watching him fumble his way through flirting with a girl or try to pull off some wrestling move. 

It’s not a good feeling. It’s dangerously close to pity. 

“Well, you shouldn’t,” Dennis says, knowing he sounds defeated. Mac just laughs again as he storms up the stairs, trying to suppress a scream. 

***  
"Charlie, I need help," Dennis groans. "Hey, you're not wearing the crust punk stuff anymore." 

"Oh yeah bro, we dropped that a while ago," Charlie says casually. It's the middle of the day, Mac and Dee have gone out to buy more tequila, and Frank is in the back office in the middle of an extended call to a phone sex hotline, so they're the only two people in the bar. "What, are you and Mac still doing the living in the suburbs thing?" 

Dennis sighs. "Yeah, we are, and it's driving me insane, man. Mac is so into it, it's basically like being married to him. I thought, you know him better than anyone, you must have some idea how I can get out of this."

"Oh. Hmm." Charlie takes a long drink of his beer and nods thoughtfully, staring off into space. "You know, are you like, really sure that you want to?" 

"Of course I want to! It's a total disaster." 

"Look, this is just something I've been thinking about a lot lately." Charlie is leaning forward and still nodding to himself, looking weirdly intense. "If you really care about someone, I mean, why wouldn't you spend your whole life with them, even if other people say it seems crazy or weird or not good for you?"

"Is this about you and the waitress, because that does not seem relevant to the situation," Dennis says. 

"No." Charlie points a scolding finger at him. "I'm saying, you know, you and Mac are totally obsessed with each other, and you spend all your time together, and you bought this house together which probably has like a thirty year mortgage, so you obviously just want to do that whole thing, and like, live together forever, so you should probably just do that even if other people think it's really weird." 

The house does have a thirty year mortgage, although Dennis hadn't really thought about it before. "That is not how I pictured my life going, Charlie," he says. He should probably drink a few more beers. 

Charlie knows it, and slides one across the bar. "I'm just saying, you should do your weird thing, dude, if that's gonna make you happy." 

It's not weird. It's only weird because Mac is making it weird, and Charlie is reading into it, and otherwise it would be a perfectly normal thing. 

"Thanks, Charlie, that was super helpful," Dennis says, and slams back the whole bottle. 

His phone buzzes. It's a text from Mac--"just checking in :)". Dennis groans and puts his head down on the bar. 

***   
It wasn't totally true that he'd never thought about it. He knew Mac was in love with him; of course he knew. It would have been impossible to miss. 

He'd know for a few years, at least, when he realized he was wrong about his originally evaluation of Mac's psychosexual profile, which had always been iffy and inconsistent, and that Mac was definitely one hundred percent gay. 

The signs that Mac was also one hundred percent into him were there all along, Dennis just hadn't known to look for them. 

It was nice, too, in a way. Mac was his best friend. And the DENNIS System worked fairly well, in the short term and with some maintenance, but Mac--dependable, co-dependent Mac--would always be there. All he needed in return was Dennis' very occasional and minimal validation. 

But maybe that wasn't working anymore. Mac’s responses had certainly changed. 

He was so frustrating sometimes, with his stupid denial and the way he couldn't even look at Dennis when he talked to him. Mac would go through this cycle, moving in for a kiss, acting like nothing had happened when Dennis pulled away, and then avoiding his eyes for weeks. 

It shouldn't have made Dennis want to spend more time with him, or made him wonder what it would be like if someday he just let it happen. It was pathetic, was what it was. 

But it meant something.

The rationalization goes like this--if you want someone to admit they want you, it's probably because you want them, too. 

He’d always assumed, of course, that this stage in his life--the bar, spending all time with the same four people, living with Mac--was temporary. Eventually, he’d meet the right woman, the one who would make him want to give it all up and settle down and have a few kids, and whenever he wasn’t busy he’d swing by to spend time with his family, the picture of Norman Rockwell American domesticity. 

But where had he gotten that idea from? He’d been imagining himself, really, as Frank, and Frank lived in an apartment with a dozen cats in the walls, sharing a bed with Dennis’ weirdest friend from high school. If Frank didn’t have to worry about social norms anymore, why should he, someone who was an obvious improvement on Frank Reynolds in every way? 

Really, maybe Charlie had a point. If you had a good thing, well, why try to fix it? 

Dennis opens his file on the gang's collective group dynamic to the page where he had been, since high school, charting individual relationships and ways they could go wrong. 

There's one column with only one relationship in it--"Possible Sexual Compatibility". That's Dee and Charlie--they think he doesn't know about that, but they're completely transparent to anyone who's known them for as long as he has. 

Dennis absently bites at the cap of his pen. It already has teeth marks in it. 

"Disgusting," he mutters, and jots down another pair of names. 

"Dennis and Mac?" 

***   
There are apparently an incredible number of improvements someone can make to a perfectly acceptable-looking suburban house. Mac seems determined to make all of them. Or at least, start to make all of them. 

The most successful one is the painting. It's a long-term operation, Mac says; the house’s colors are going to be burnt sienna and periwinkle. 

He explains this in the middle of a long session of mixing paint colors in the breakfast nook, after spending the better part of an hour so absorbed in comparing color swatches that he doesn't notice Dennis drinking most of the six pack he’s going through behind his back. 

“I don't like this,” Dennis says, swigging the rest of the last beer. 

“What's wrong with it?” Mac sounds alarmed; there's a streak of blue paint in his hair. “Did you like sunshine yellow better?” 

“We’re wasting energy on this. I mean, is this what you really want to be doing with your time?” Dennis swings his arm around expansively at the paint cans and drop cloths filling the room. “This is soft, man. What would the guys from Asskickers United say about this?” 

Mac squints at him. “Um, Asskickers United is a fake thing that you made up.” 

“But it had followers! Adherents!” Dennis insists. “The point I'm making is that no one thinks a guy is a badass if he spends time coordinating his ceiling trim and his candle holders.” 

“Lots of classic badasses know about interior design, okay? It's attractive to women.” 

“It's gay, Mac.” 

That’s usually a surefire line. 

“Fine, bro, you'll thank me when you can actually convince those girls you bring over that a woman used to live here,” Mac says mildly. 

So trying to provoke him in private doesn't work. Bringing it up around the gang doesn't work either, even when Dee jumps in immediately with a whole series of soccer mom jokes. 

He has to escalate. 

He calls a phone number he's been saving and invites its owner to the bar. He slept with her once, weeks ago, and she comes as soon as he calls--a testament to the success of the system. He teaches her to play pool, hovering over her shoulder and whispering in her ear. He can feel Mac watching them from across the room--Mac always watches. Dennis keeps count of the number of beers he goes through, listens to him laugh too loud in his conversation with Charlie. 

“Let's go back to your place,” he tells the girl. 

It'll sting more that way. He doesn't have the camera system set up yet anyway. 

Somehow, closing the deal with her and then slipping out through the window the next morning before she wakes up isn't as satisfying as it used to be. 

Mac is already at the bar the next day when he walks out. “Hey, Den,” he says nonchalantly. “You missed a great idea. We’re training Chase as a bomb-sniffing dog.” 

He wasn't expecting crying and begging, of course, but anger might have been nice. Being able to get Mac angry used to be a reliable thing. 

So Dennis chooses not to respond to that. 

He wouldn't even risk this degree of emotional neglect with most subjects, and he’s getting nothing. 

But this is Mac, who he's hit and hurt and used, who knows him better than anyone and has seen him at his worst and who he's never once let kiss him. All of the thoughtless rituals of their lives seem strangely significant now. If Mac doesn't love him, if all these accumulated years of tolerance don't equal love, what does? 

Dennis wonders if maybe they've kissed before, fucked before, and he just doesn't remember it, or neither of them does. There would have been plenty of opportunities. 

“Your hair looks good today,” he says casually, like it’s just a thought that struck him. “I like it better when you don't slick it back.” 

Mac’s eyes widen and he smiles slowly, then runs a hand through his hair as if to check that is really ungelled; he leaves it sticking up in places, and Dennis actually has always liked that better. “Um--thanks.” 

Inspire Hope is still working, then. 

There doesn't seem to be much hope of separating entirely. 

***   
Dennis stops sleeping as much at night. He's definitely going through more cigarettes per day than usual. One morning when Mac tries to get him to eat pancakes, he maybe throws the plate across the foyer. It's Mac's fault, really, for being so goddamn irritating. 

"Can you calm the hell down, dude?!" Mac yells. "You're totally freaking out for no reason right now." 

"I'm freaking out because I don't want to eat your goddamn chocolate chip pancakes, Mac, alright, I don't need this from you! I don't need you running my life and acting like we're some kind of couple and painting the goddamn breakfast nook!" This is a completely reasonable position to take, Dennis feels. 

Mac just stares at him. "I am not acting like we're a couple," he says, sounding wounded. 

Dennis ends up screaming on the lawn about something, mostly at their neighbor, he thinks, but that definitely seems justified too. 

He doesn’t quite remember how he ends up on their living room couch wearing the stupid “riot” t-shirt and feeling oddly exhausted. 

“Hey,” Mac says quietly. Dennis looks around in surprise--he’s sitting next to him drinking a beer and letting Chase drink one out of a cereal bowl. “Are you back?” 

He’s bleeding--fingernail scratches down his cheek again. Dennis doesn’t think he’s bleeding anywhere. The guy really has to work on hitting back. 

“What happened?” Dennis mutters. 

“The neighbourhood watch thing called,” Mac says, which doesn’t really explain much. “Don’t worry, I told them you have that borderline thing Dee always talks about and I said I would make sure you take your medicine.”

Dennis laughs. “Well, that’s just great. Thanks.” 

“I have the pills in my room,” Mac says quietly, staring down at his shoes. “Maybe you really should take them.” 

The anger is back, at that. “How can you say that to me? You don’t--you have no right to tell me that.” 

Mac is still evading his eyes. Instead, he turns to the dog. “Chase, you should probably leave the room for this,” he says, and deposits him on the floor. When Chase just stands there, forlornly, Mac nudges him away and raises his voice for the first time. “Come on, leave!”

Only when the dog scampers away does he speak again. 

“You said I was acting like we were a couple.” 

Dennis can’t stop himself from laughing. “You are. Even you can’t be that clueless, Mac.” 

“It’s--” Mac takes a deep, shaky breath. “It’s this house, Charlie was right when he told me this was a bad idea, it’s weird--” 

“That’s not it. You’re not even looking at me. You know,” Dennis says, “you make it very easy to hurt you.” He watches Mac’s hands curl into fists at his sides, and it’s almost what he wants. “I want you to tell me you love me.” 

“You mess with my head,” Mac says--some anger, some defiance in his voice now. “You make me feel like this.” 

“You know you can't blame anyone else for this. Except maybe God.” 

This is healthy, in a way. He needs to say it, and he won't ever say it to anyone else. 

Dennis watches Mac’s tightly clenched hands, fingernails biting into the skin. He watches the clench of his jaw and the anger--finally, anger--flick across his face. 

“I just want to hear you say it,” Dennis says, keeping his voice soft and gentle and coaxing. 

“Fine,” Mac says, and it's finally as bitter and angry as Dennis had wanted. Mac stares at him for a moment, breathing hard, and then he's reaching out, pulling Dennis forward by the shoulder, and kissing him, hard and quick and desperate. 

He tastes a little like blood, and it makes Dennis lightheaded; he bites at Mac’s lip hard enough to draw more. 

It's better than Dennis thought it would be. It’s like the half-remembered feeling of being drunk when they were thirteen and it was new and risky, dangerous. It's like kissing Maureen for the first time in high school when he had wanted nothing else for months. When Mac stops, eyes still closed and looking defeated, and pulls away from him, Dennis feels breathless. 

“I love you,” Mac says in a rush, and they're not touching at all anymore, and his voice sounds broken. 

“Am I the first man you’ve ever kissed?” Dennis asks him. 

He nods, shamefaced, and Dennis smiles. “I wouldn't do this with anyone else,” Mac says softly, avoiding his eyes again. “But I wanted it for, for a long time.” 

"How exactly do you tell yourself that's okay?" Dennis asks. He wants to kiss him again but more than that he wants to know. It feels like he's waited forever for that answer. 

"It's you," Mac says simply, and Dennis can tell there are years and paragraphs of religious justification and pathetic, self-serving delusion behind that. Dennis will drag it out of him someday. He wants to hear it all. But Mac doesn't say any of that now, and in a way it doesn't matter, because Dennis won--he won out over God. 

Mac just looks down at the hardwood floor and says, "You ruined my life, dude." 

"This is our life," Dennis says, meaning all of it--the blood and the kissing and the neighbours who hate them and the stupid breakfast nook. They'll never untangle themselves from each other, never be completely free. That must be what Mac meant. It's you.

“I know. I forgive you,” Mac says, his thumb running nervously over the blood on his lip. “Am I--can I kiss you again?” 

“I'll let you do more than that,” Dennis promises, and the look in Mac’s eyes is better than he thought it could be, better than he could have imagined. 

*** 

Things work pretty much the same way afterwards. Mac starts wearing cologne every day and Dennis eventually has to hide it. He also starts making Fight Milk protein shakes for breakfast every morning and tells Dennis he’d look better with a little more muscle definition, and Dennis drinks them out of respect for this attempt at the mutual manipulation on which all the best relationships are built. The alcohol content helps. 

Dee makes them sign a contract promising not to have sex anywhere in bar when she finds out, but of course they do anyway. 

There are other things that are harder to think about, like how he’d always hated sharing a bed with the people he slept with but didn't mind waking up with Mac’s arm around him and Mac drooling onto his shoulder. But it made a sort of sense. You build up a tolerance to people, after so many years. 

After they’ve lived there for almost two month, Dennis realizes that they never actually had a housewarming party, and that it’s not too late for this great opportunity to get free shit from all their friends. They buy too many bottles of wine and hold it in the breakfast nook, which is the best-looking in the house because Mac painted almost all of it before they moved on to more interesting projects. 

Dee gets them a relatively nice vase that will definitely be broken in the next week, one way or another. 

Charlie gets them a particularly deranged-looking and almost certainly stolen garden gnome, which Mac sets proudly on top of the fridge. 

Frank gets them nothing, and tells Dennis that if he was going to be gay all of a sudden, he at least could have better taste in men. 

“Hey, dude, are these throwing stars?” Charlie asks, momentarily distracted from their ill-considered cheese platter. He’s holding one of Mac’s star-shaped candle holders, for which candles had never actually been purchased. 

“No! Come on!” Mac yells, but Charlie’s already thrown it, and Mac dives for it, immediately tripping into the pile of abandoned paint cans and scattering them across the floor. 

Frank, drinking directly from a bottle of wine, raises his eyebrows at Dennis significantly, and Dennis just closes his eyes. 

When everyone leaves, the dog tracks burnt sienna paint all over the carpets upstairs. Mac kisses him in their kitchen and whispers “I’m sorry” until Dennis stops wanting to break a wine glass. 

There are worse ways to live.


End file.
